


handed down a shield

by thistlestars



Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: (Character Death tag refers to Wishkit and Hopekit), Canon-Typical Pregnancy Mentions, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Squirrelflight also deserves better, Yellowfang deserved better than her StarClan mischaracterization in canon, mostly canon-compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28575858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistlestars/pseuds/thistlestars
Summary: Yellowfang gives birth to three kittens whose birth defies the code she lives by, alone in the shelter of a hollow tree, while the snow rages outside. She brings her son into a life where he’s denied a loving mother, and pays the price for her mistakes.Leafpool gives birth to three kittens whose birth defies the code she lives by, but she is not alone. Her kits will have a better life than Brokentail. Both Yellowfang and Squirrelflight will make sure of it.(title lyric taken from ribs by the crane wives)
Relationships: Brokentail & Yellowfang (Warriors), Crowfeather/Leafpool (Warriors), Firestar & Yellowfang (Warriors), Leafpool & Squirrelflight (Warriors), Squirrelflight & Yellowfang (Warriors), Yellowfang/Raggedstar (Warriors)
Kudos: 28





	handed down a shield

The wind howls, cruel and cold, snow and ice swirling in the snowy tempest that rains its fury down upon the earth below. A bad omen, Yellowfang thinks, the pain that warns of kits to come blurring with the anxious, miserable knot that ties itself in the pit of her stomach. Still, she presses onwards, desperate to get as far from ShadowClan's camp as she can before her body finally insists that she can go no further. 

Even with her thick fur, she is freezing, shivering with every step she takes. The snow falling wipes away her pawprints as she goes, and she wonders... if something went wrong, would anyone be able to find her? How long would it take for her clanmates to find her? To find the kits?

No, she shakes her head… she cannot think of that. Wincing, barely biting back a yowl, she feels another wave of agony crash over her, and knows that she is fast approaching the end of her journey. Amber eyes narrow and squint through the blizzard, until she spots it-- a sheltered nook inside the hollow trunk of a dying pine. 

She stumbles inside, and collapses, and for all the kits who have come into the world at her paws, never once have they been hers to birth. Never once _ should  _ they have been hers to birth. Yet here she is, and this is the price she must pay for it. Kitting alone in the storm, not a soul nearby to hear her scream. 

Yellowfang does scream, as quietly as she can, unable to bear the pain silently and praying that the howling wind will drown her wailing. Her kits are born in hours that feel like moons passing, slow and agonizing, filled with the panicked thought that  _ this isn't right.  _ The certain, terrified conviction that she is going to die here, alone, before she can bring them into the world.

And then, finally, panting in heavy breaths, it is over, and her kittens suckle against her stomach. Two daughters, one with gray fur like Yellowfang's own, and another's black like the midnight sky outside. One son, the spitting image of Raggedstar. All three are weak, and in her exhaustion she is unsurprised that the ordeal took a toll on them as well as her.

She feels as though the blizzard outside has made its way into her soul and begun to tear its claws into her heart, and as tears run down her eyes, she wails her grief for the life she might have had, for the life these kits might have had. She cannot raise them. She cannot even give them a good life, a loving mother who is not her. The only option is to bring them to Lizardstripe.

"I'm so sorry," Yellowfang sobs to the tiny lives she guards, "you never should have been born, I'm sorry… I love you, I do, but… it would have been kinder." There is a world, she thinks, in which she chose Raggedstar over her love for healing. One where she stepped down, let Sagewhisker train another apprentice, and lived the life of a warrior and a mother.

Yellowfang could have brought these kits into that world. Instead, they are here, and she loves them,  _ oh  _ how she loves them, yet she knows she cannot give them the world she wishes for. There is nothing she can do to ensure her children have a better life, nothing to do but hope.

"Hopekit," she murmurs, touching her nose to the gray kitten's head. "And Wishkit." Her tongue smooths the fur of the black one's. Her unnamed son, she does not speak a name aloud to, because she knows she cannot use it.  _ Raggedkit.  _

He looks just like his father. The tom who she loves more than anything in the world, yet who she will never be able to raise these kits with. Her heart feels as though it might split in two, and as her gaze lands on the bend in his tail, like a snapped twig, she whispers, "Brokenkit," for both the kitten's bent tail and for the crack splitting down the inside of her chest. 

_ Perhaps Raggedstar will name him Brokenheart. Wouldn't that be fitting?  _

She spends the night licking them the wrong way to fluff up their fur and keep them warm, begging them to suckle, to drink enough milk to stay alive. All the tears shed do nothing, and by morning, both her daughters lie still at her side, their breath having slowed until their chests no longer rose and fell. 

The cruelest sign she's ever known-- Hopekit and Wishkit are dead, and the son who remains should never have been born. The ground is too frozen for a grave to be dug, and so she lets the tiny bodies remain in the hollow of the pine tree, and digs at the snow until she unearths enough rocks and leaves to bury them. 

"May you find swift running, good hunting, and shelter where you sleep," Yellowfang whispers, before she takes Brokenkit's scruff in her jaws and, as the snow lets up, begins the journey back to ShadowClan. 

* * *

Curled in a hollow tree far from the one Yellowfang birthed her curse upon the clans in, yet hauntingly similar to it, Leafpool welcomes Crowfeather's kittens to the world, and starry pawsteps crunch in the snow outside. 

_ Fireheart's daughters. Children of the cat I loved as if he'd been my own child. _

Perhaps it's the blessing of her father's legacy that lets Leafpool's kittens live when hers could not, that lets Leafpool give her kittens the loving kithood that Yellowfang couldn't give Brokenkit.

"Squirrelflight," Yellowfang says softly, amber eyes meeting widened green ones, "Don't doubt yourself." She presses a paw to the ginger molly's chest. "You're a good cat, a loving cat… and you would be a wonderful mother. You have the chance to give your sister's kittens a happy life."

Squirrelflight looks at her, surprised, glances back at the tiny newborns who lay at Leafpool's belly, and nods. "You're right," she whispers. She didn't ask for this, but she chooses it willingly regardless, out of love for her sister and her young niece and nephews. "I'll take them."

Lizardstripe was always bitter, resented kits and resented having them. She didn't even want her own, only wanted to appease her mate who did. Yellowfang cannot find a trace of her in Squirrelflight, who is loving and strong and would never let herself be pressured into anything she truly hated. Not in Squirrelflight, who has her father's heart. 

Yellowfang presses her forehead to Squirrelflight's and whispers, barely audibly, "Thank you." 

Fireheart's grandchildren will not grow up like Brokenkit, and this, she swears. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading— if you enjoyed, please consider giving kudos or leaving a comment, your support means the world to me. 
> 
> find me on other social media @venuspaws on twitter & @lesbianbristlefrost on tumblr


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